Reddit mentions of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy

Yeah you got me there. It's not like an economics professor wrote a book about how debt grows faster than the growth of the economy and how debts have to be periodically forgiven with a jubilee or else civilization will collapse exactly like how the Roman empire did. Oh wait.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014IAV9MK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

There's at least one economist who thinks canceling debt is a good idea: Michael Hudson.

> Good luck explaining that when you have shareholders... You can literally be sued as a company director for not maximising profits of the business, in some countries. In Australia for example, Section 181 of the Australian Corporations Law dictates this.

Yes, there are laws that can be (ab)used to encourage CEOs to loot the businesses they run. But please keep in mind that they do so because they profit from doing so; before paying the leadership in stocks was the norm, they tended not to, because they saw that this was not in the (longer-term) interest of the business, of the people they worked with, etc.. It's only since roughly the 1980s that this became in vogue.

That said, the legal case is really shoddy, because short-term gains almost always come at the cost of longer-term viability (e.g. cutting out R&D, replacing permanent experienced employees with young inexperienced ones, etc.). And legally, equity is the last in line when it comes to bankruptcy proceedings. Yet we now live in a world where people like to pretend that "shareholders" determine everything. Nonsense.

If you're interested, I'd really recommend you pick up https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Host-Financial-Parasites-Bondage-ebook/dp/B014IAV9MK/ , because this logic is also eating up Intel, IBM, and hundreds if not thousands of other corporations who are going heavily into debt to pay dividends, at a huge cost to their future profitability, simply because the incentive structure is set up that way. (And NV is doing something similar.)

Seems like all you did was throw some vocab words around without explaining how 2% in any way aligns with the money supply. For one how we calculate GDP is pretty inaccurate since it tends to double count dollars in certain financial transactions as new money being created even though its just shifting the money supply from one sector of the economy to another while keeping the money supply the same.

>Dollar 'value' of course being measured by the relative, price-visible value of the entire portfolio of assets and goods in the economy.

Yes i know how GDP is measured. I also know the fed is completely entrapped to banks and the FIRE sector and act on the behalf of the asset owning class. Especially since they're an unofficial monetary arm of the fed and have to act in a way that sustains a bubble economy since the capital gains class has siphoned off far too much money from households and government via monopoly rent and accumulating interest.

It's completely pseudoscientific to think we need to keep inflation as absurdly low as 2%. The real initiative is rich fucks not wanting to give up money going to their stock options and assets denoted in stocks, but going to worker's wages instead. If workers are allowed to have their wages rise with the decreasing reserved army of the unemployed then inflation WONT overtake their wage increases. Even the fed admitted this policy is fallacious and prevents ppl that sell their labor from being able to enjoy the fruits of the economy.

If we're on book recommendations: https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Host-Financial-Parasites-Bondage-ebook/dp/B014IAV9MK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543588857&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+hudson+killing+the+host

And yeah a non-zero amount of financial trading can reach the real economy (hence the bubble we're in) but relative to workers spending that cash instead of keeping it as low taxed capital gains far more of it circulates in the real economy and prevents this internal imbalance we're experiencing.

The best book on the true nature of capitalism that I have encountered is Killing the Host by Michael Hudson.

Hudson and Steve Keen are the best economists I have found; they both understand the actual economy in a way that none of the Keynesians or Austrians do.

> Yes, there are laws that can be (ab)used to encourage CEOs to loot the businesses they run. But please keep in mind that they do so because they profit from doing so; before paying the leadership in stocks was the norm, they tended not to, because they saw that this was not in the (longer-term) interest of the business, of the people they worked with, etc.. It's only since roughly the 1980s that this became in vogue.

Right, well if you're going to bring up the past rather than what is current law. Before these anti-competition laws came into practise, you could screw over consumers by making exclusive agreements no problem. See the law of the past doesn't matter now... because the law of the present is all that matters contextually.

> That said, the legal case is really shoddy, because short-term gains almost always come at the cost of longer-term viability (e.g. cutting out R&D, replacing permanent experienced employees with young inexperienced ones, etc.). And legally, equity is the last in line when it comes to bankruptcy proceedings. Yet we now live in a world where people like to pretend that "shareholders" determine everything. Nonsense.

Well sure shareholders don't determine everything, only a certain set of shareholders have real power. At the end of the day though, you can have someone who owns 85% of the stock in a company and yet a CEO can still make a decision against that shareholder's interest. It's just the way things are. Some people like to screw other people over. But usually CEOs like that are either booted out or they face legal ramifications later on. Point is, short terms gains sometimes translate into long term gains or long term losses. It depends on a case by cases basis and the circumstances that come from the decisions.

> If you're interested, I'd really recommend you pick up https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Host-Financial-Parasites-Bondage-ebook/dp/B014IAV9MK/ , because this logic is also eating up Intel, IBM, and hundreds if not thousands of other corporations who are going heavily into debt to pay dividends, at a huge cost to their future profitability, simply because the incentive structure is set up that way. (And NV is doing something similar.)

Sure if I have any spare time from my law degree. I'll give it a read.